Athens: Lack of funding holds back the extension of Suburban Railway to Lavrio

The extension of Suburban Railway network to Lavrio is a long-desired project that first emerged in the distant 2004. It concerns the construction of a double-track, electrified (trolley-type) line, allowing speeds up to 120 km/h. It will comprise 8 stations and cover almost the entire area of ​​Lavreotiki supporting both passenger and cargo services from the port.

Although the project has been announced several times, it has never made it to its implementation stage, at least so far. We have seen this planned in the framework of a combined road and railway extension project, even in the proposals for “Juncker Package”, in which, the Port of Lavrio was also involved.

Today, the project stagnates in low “maturity”, with the latest development being in Summer 2016 when a call for tender, concerning the required studies, was announced for 8.42mio euros. More particularly, in August 2016, ERGOSE requested funding, but it was rejected by ERDF’s Special Secretariat for the Management of Sectoral Operational Programs on the grounds that, studies in order to be funded should concern projects that are scheduled to be completed in the current NSRF period.

Given the above-mentioned setbacks, ERGOSE submitted an additional funding request, outside the framework of NSRF, based on national resources. To date, according to ERGOSE, there is still no answer.

All of this seems to be moving at a relatively slow pace, and due to the lack of resources even for the part of the studies we can soon see the project being realized and the great expansion of the Athens suburban railway to the port of Lavrion still has enough road.

Nevertheless, the extension of the Suburban Railway to Lavrio, with an estimated cost of 160mio euros, is currently moving at a relatively slow pace setting the initiation of the construction phase in the indefinite future. The extension is expected to be hugely beneficial for Lavrio, which, due to its proximity to Athens’ International Airport could function as a home port for cruise ships, thus promoting growth for the surrounding area generally.

Nikos Karagiannis-ypodomes.com

Follow Nikos Karagiannis on Twitter